Looks like Sam's hopes and dreams are over.

Brownback, a long-shot conservative contender, had trouble raising money to compete in the race. He is expected announce his withdrawal in Topeka, Kan.

Maybe now Sam can get back to what he was elected to do, represent the people of Kansas in the Senate.

Poor Brownback. His weak fundraising quarter has left him with only $95,000 in the bank (as opposed to Giuliani's $10 million.)

Brownback has said he will pull out of the race if he doesn't finish in the top four in the Iowa contest in January. Recent polls show him in eighth place with support from 2 percent of those surveyed.

$10,000 is hardly enough to win Iowa. After all, even at the height of his fundraising, he wasn't exactly a contender.

Whatever influence Brownback wielded as the candidate of religious conservatives has waned since an August straw poll in Ames, Iowa, where he finished third behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Other top candidates skipped the event altogether, making it important for Brownback to have a strong finish. But it was Huckabee's long-shot candidacy that received a boost afterward, especially with the group of conservative values voters important to Brownback.

Well, Pat Roberts again turned his back on our troops, and this time Sam Brownback decided to show up to work and do the same.

"This amendment would provide a safety net to our men and women in uniform by providing a minimum and more predictable time for them to rest and retrain," Webb said. "Our troops are spending more time in Iraq than they're spending at home," when traditional Pentagon guidelines say they should be given home stays twice as long as their deployments, he said.

When will Roberts put Kansans - especially Kansans who are sacrificing every single day to fight for our country - before Bush and his failed policies in Iraq?

The good news is, you're always guaranteed a good seat at a Brownback event!

Maybe all of that time away from Kansas is coming back to bite Sen. Sam Brownback. The Kansas progressive blog Blue Tide Rising brings news that Brownback lost the Johnson County Republican Party straw poll to Fred Thompson. And it wasn't even close.

Sam Brownback (R-Iowa Kansas) just can’t find that balance between showing up for the job he was elected to do and running for the job he’ll never get. He’s now missed 81 votes – one-third of the total this year – putting him second behind Sen. John McCain and Sen. Tim Johnson. (Johnson, of course, is recovering from a brain hemorrhage.)

But Brownback’s people say he’ll show up if it is an important vote – like preventing Americans from benefiting from life-saving research.

Brownback spokesman Brian Hart said his boss was prepared to leave an Iowa bus tour last week to vote. It looked like he might be needed to help block an attempt to override President Bush's veto of legislation that would ease restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

Given the way he votes against the people of Kansas, we encourage him to miss even more votes.